Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar has said his government would amend the constitution to remove President Tamás Sulyok, after the head of state refused to step down.
Magyar made the announcement on Monday outside the Sándor Palace, the presidential residence in Budapest, following a meeting with Sulyok. The president was elected with the backing of former prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party.
“The Hungarian republic does not belong to Tamás Sulyok, Viktor Orbán, a political party or a political system,” Magyar told reporters.
The Prime Minister had called on Sulyok and several senior officials appointed under Orbán — among them the chief prosecutor and the head of the Constitutional Court — to resign, accusing the president of failing to act as an independent head of state and of behaving as Orbán’s “puppet”.
Magyar said that, rather than open a formal removal procedure, the government would change the constitution in order to protect the standing of the presidency. His Tisza party holds enough seats to push such a change through.
Tisza won a two-thirds majority in the April 12 parliamentary election, ending Orbán’s 16 years in power and handing Magyar the supermajority needed to alter the constitution. Magyar, a former MEP who quit Fidesz in 2024, has framed the result as the end of the system built by Orbán.
The Prime Minister said a new president could in future be chosen by direct election rather than by a vote in parliament, a change he argued reflected the will of voters.
On May 29, Sulyok said he would not resign and had asked the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s main advisory body on constitutional law, to assess the dispute. He has argued there is no constitutional basis for him to leave office, saying his removal would not resolve the institutional conflict between the two offices.
The standoff has drawn close attention in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed Tisza’s election victory as a sign that Hungary had “chosen Europe”, with European Union officials hoping for a more cooperative relationship after years of clashes with Orbán over the rule of law, migration and EU funding.
